People often talk about what makes a good leader, but this can be misleading sometimes.
There are numerous leadership styles and many ways people with different traits can excel as a leader or manager. You don’t necessarily need to have charisma or an outgoing personality to make a good leader.
However, the traits of a bad leader are set in stone. Here are the 5 things you do not want in a leader at your workplace.
1. Cannot Be Contacted
The leader of a team is its cornerstone. Thus, it is important for all leaders to be updated about the aspects of the team’s projects and contactable on workdays.
An uncontactable leader often results in a team that is confused about their objectives and tasks. A confused team is unlikely to trust their leader, which leads to a downward spiral of low morale and poor performance.
If you’re appointing leaders and managers, make sure you’re not picking the ones who are often nowhere to be found during a crisis or those who cannot be contacted by phone or email during working hours!
2. Doesn’t Listen
A leader with a one-track mind is a lone wolf—not a leader.
Someone who doesn’t listen to the opinions and thoughts of others is unlikely to make a good leader solely because this person has no intentions of acknowledging the strengths of others.
A team is made out of many people, not for the purpose of having more hands to do the job, but because a group of people can bounce ideas off one another and make up for each other’s weaknesses.
Thus, leaders who do not listen when others are speaking or cut team members off while they speak are unlikely to know their members well and will often be dismissive and arrogant.
3. Uses Scare Tactics
A leader who influences their team through fear is very much like the boy who cried wolf.
Someone who lies or exaggerates consequences will eventually get found out and lose the trust of their people. Those who expect the impossible and scare team members into obedience are unlikely to remind a leader for long.
After all, dictators are often overthrown or deserted.
A team led by such a person might be productive in the short-term, but such practices will result in a toxic work environment that nobody wants to be a part of.
4. Blames Others
As we’ve seen from the points above, good leaders consider the opinions of their team members. However, this is not an excuse to place the blame for failure on team members when things go wrong.
With great power comes great responsibility. This is exceptionally true of leadership.
A leader has the final say and makes the important decisions, thus it is important that your leader is one who has the mental strength to be accountable for the team’s decisions.
Someone who likes to blame others is often unwilling to be accountable for their actions or unwilling to improve themselves. When this is amplified in the role of a leader, the people who work for such a manager will suffer and this lack of self-reflection means the team will never grow.
5. Takes All the Credit
Similarly, someone who likes to take all credit for group success will also make a bad leader.
A leader might bear the most responsibility for all the important decisions, but a team’s achievements are not possible with just the efforts of the leader alone.
Team members need to be praised and their contributions should be celebrated and recognised in order for the team to grow and learn from their success.
Someone who steals the thunder from others is unlikely to make a good leader. Such a person often lacks the ability to do their work well and tries to compensate by putting up a front.
A person like that as a manager of a team is just a recipe for disaster.